WASHINGTON, 5 June 2005 — Copies of the Holy Qur’an were splashed with urine, stepped on and kicked by guards and interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, the US military admitted late Friday.
The military, which released details of five incidents of mishandling of the Muslim holy book, however, said its investigation confirmed that no Qur’an was ever flushed down a toilet, as a now withdrawn Newsweek magazine report claimed last month.
The US Southern Command, which supervises the Guantanamo facility, said the report provided details to back up statements by the Guantanamo commander, Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, who completed the three-week inquiry this week. It confirmed the five cases of intentional or unintentional mishandling of the holy book from among 19 alleged incidents since the detention facility opened in January 2002. Gen. Hood characterized the incidents as rare, isolated and largely inadvertent, and said more than 1,600 Qur’an copies had been distributed at the facility.
The investigation said the five confirmed incidents were:
•March 5, 2005, a detainee and his Qur’an were “splashed” by urine while the detainee lay near an air vent inside the prison. A guard was found to have “urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the block.” The guard was “reprimanded” and reassigned to duties of no contact with detainees.
•August 2003, a “two-word obscenity” was written in English on the inside cover of an English-language version of one detainee’s Qur’an. The report noted: “It is possible that a guard committed this act; it is equally possible that the detainee wrote in his own Qur’an.”
•August 2003, military officials acting as night guards in the prison tossed water balloons into a cellblock causing several copies of the Qur’an to become wet. Detainees complained to the guards about the incident, which went uninvestigated until last month.
•July 2003, a contract interrogator apologized to a detainee for stepping on the detainee’s Qur’an during an interrogation session. The detainee “accepted the apology and agreed to inform other detainees of the apology and ask them to cease disruptive behaviors caused by the incident.” The interrogator was later fired.
•February 2002, military prison guards kicked a copy of one detainee’s Qur’an. A detainee complained about the incident to an interrogator. The incident went uninvestigated until last month.
“Clearly the Qur’an abuse happened, but the Qur’an abuse is minor, relatively speaking, because there are so many other issues involving abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo, which keeps on coming out bit by bit,” a State Department official said anonymously.
“I think it would be better if they had an independent commission, similar to the 9/11 Commission, investigate all the allegation. But I do not think the military should investigate itself, because it leads to the question of credibility. We need to investigate all the allegations, and the whole pattern of abuse, and come out with recommendations that would guide us — because this has created so much bad publicity and ill feeling,” said the State Department official. “All of this is causing us so much damage, we need to answer these allegations and fix what’s wrong.”
But a Marine officer based in Iraq, who responded by e-mail to Arab News, disagreed.
“Those who criticize the US and the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay should also recognize and applaud the fact that the military provides a copy of the Qur’an to every single detainee, instructs US personnel in proper treatment of the holy book, and disciplines or instructs those who break the rules, even unintentionally.
“Compare this to the terrorists and criminals who would never provide their Christian captives with a Bible, much less care about how it was treated,” the officer said.
